to forget
by kathleenfergie
Summary: There were so many things he would never tell her about the time he lost, all those miles away in a place he did not know. He would never tell her of the immense pain he felt when they cut into his chest, into his mouth, his mind. His scars were almost enough.They would seem to convey the words he himself could not. She would see them, touch and feel them, and she would understand.


Hi. So this is another oneshot, more focused on Mulder and Scully, more so than Scully by herself. It came to me two hours ago and I hate to write like a fiend. Includes self harm, so if you don't enjoy that, try and skip over that paragraph(s). So I hope you enjoy. As always I own nothing.

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There were so many things he would never tell her about the time he lost, all those miles away, in a place he did not know. He would never tell her of the immense pain he felt when they cut into his chest, into his mouth, his mind. His scars were almost enough. They would seem to convey the words he himself could not. She would see them, touch and feel them, and she would understand.

She had scars, too, he had to remind himself. They were smaller, but they were there. He would touch the back of her neck and think of her times in the hospital, both of them, when he thought he would die along with her. Her other scars, the scars that came with being a mother, made her feel ashamed. He would stare at them, and she would hide, feeling ashamed. She would always believe that what she had done with their son would be her greatest sin, on top of all of her other more heinous crimes. He would never comment, though. He would never express how he truly thought about that event in their life.

For a long time he had held in what he was feeling. He would hole himself up in his desolate office, far away from society, and he would sit and think. He would lose himself in the memories of his shady past. When that wasn't enough, he had to resort to returning to the investigator. At first he was consumed in newspaper clippings and magazine articles, then the obsession of continuing his quest moved to online sites based around conspiracies, some of his own conspiracy beliefs weaved throughout them. He would map out different unexplained events on his walls and connect them with pieces of string. When he could not quench his thirst with all the knowledge, he had lashed out. He'd taken to breaking things, yelling, throwing his precious belongings at the wall, watching them fall apart at his feet. She never showed it, but he knew she was afraid. Not of him, no, never of him, but of what he would do. She was afraid she would lose him again.

He only started self harm once the euphoria of destruction wore off. He knew he could bleed, he'd seen it happen many times, and when the pain he felt inside his head went away, the physical pain took its place. He was always careful to make sure she never found out, to stock up on first aid and cleaning products, so that her acute nose could not smell his blood over every surface it covered. He started locking his office, something he had never done, just so she couldn't find out his secret, so she couldn't stop him. He always wore long sleeve shirts, and he stopped letting her touch him. He would shy away from her gentle hand, not because she would hurt him, because he didn't want to end up hurting her.

In the end, though, he did. Just like he always did.

She finally snapped one night while he was sleeping. She couldn't bear it any longer, her painful curiosity. Pulling his shirt off with stealth, she stripped him of his bandages and saw the battlefield that were his arms, legs, and even his chest. Those scars were sparse, for when he had to let his arms heal. They were red and raw, strangers compared to the long white scar that stretched from his sternum to his stomach. When she saw what he had done to himself, she left. She left the bandages off, so he could know _why_, and left the house, driving to a destination unknown.

She didn't come back for almost a week, and when she did, she couldn't speak to him. She would open her mouth to say something, and then nothing would come out, like her vocal folds were frozen. He was the same, he didn't yell and he didn't smash things. They would stand on opposite sides of a room for some time, staring at the other, never saying a word. They couldn't stand being near each other, but at the same time they couldn't leave where they were. They were both too hurt to do anything else. She was hurt because he wouldn't let her help him, he wouldn't open up and accept the love she continued to offer. He was hurt and angry because she found out that he was weak, that he could result to defiling himself because nothing else worked, and that she betrayed him by reacting to his weakness. She didn't know _how _to react, though. She could be a doctor, she could nurse him back to health physically, take care of his wounds and make sure it never happened again, but she didn't know how to reach his mind. She couldn't see past his sorrow filled eyes because he wouldn't let her. He would go still as the grave every time she tried to say his name, his first name, not the surname that she had been somewhat forced to use, when she tried to be intimate and be his partner. _His touchstone. _

One day, after many endless hours of their daily glaring match, silently, unanimously, they decided that they needed to start over. That they needed to go through a renaissance. A rebirth.

It began after the sun had set, when the night was quiet and cold.

She had hauled countless pieces of wood into a pile and set them aflame. One by one, she fed his maps, his clippings, his photo collages, into the flames, watching them turn different colours because of the ink.

He came out into the darkness next, the orange light of the flame illuminating his face, thin from all these years of neglecting himself. Her own face was like that, too, thin and fragile. It was his turn, and his offering to the fire were the two documents the pair had grown so protective of in the last two decades. Their files, their stories. Inside were the facts and details of all the wrongs they had lived through, all the torture. They allowed themselves to take one thing from each file, one thing that was important to them.

He had come to group his sister's file with his, and from the conjoined folder, he took out the small picture of the two of them, smiling up at him, so young and so innocent. She was dead now, he had conceded, and he would remember her like this, the little girl with braids down each side of her head. He would never be the boy with a light smile on his face. Not anymore.

Her file was thicker, for she had met the brunt of every creep and killer, of every genetic experiment. Instead of only taking one thing from her folder, she took two. Two small photos of her children. Children who were both lost to her. Only one had left marks on her, the stretched skin still marred after all these years. He did not question it, she had earned that much from him.

She still wore her crucifix, though, and he found himself staring at it, the soft light of the fire glinting off the gold.

When the smaller fire was over, they set flame to their almost cabin-like house. The separate acts of burning had each been sacred in their own way; one to forget, and one to move on. All they owned now were the pictures, the car, the clothes on their back, and the money they carried with him. They believed, for a while, they could live, forgotten by the world. They were reborn. They were new people. And they trusted no one but each other.


End file.
